HOP Team Building Day 2022

On Thursday 13th October, the team at HOP took the afternoon off for our annual team building day.  We’ve missed out not holding this since 2019, so we were all super excited to get together.

Prior to the event the staff were put into Teams and added to group chats where they were told they had to delegate the following to each member; project management, procurement, branding, manufacturing, and racing.  With only those instructions, teams were left to speculate what they would be doing and, more importantly, what ‘punny’ team name they could come up with.

What they would be doing became clear on the morning of the 13th, when the brief was finally sent to staff.  The task was simple; to assemble a bicycle, create a team brand and then test the newly assembled bikes with a bicycle race.  To add to the challenge, various bike parts were placed across the city, in offices with links to HOP.  The teams had to first acquire the parts before they could assemble the bikes.

While some team members were hopping on and off the Brighton bus network, or in some cases walk six miles into central Brighton and back, others stayed behind to work on their Team brand. Equipped with fabric pens, iron on transfers and coloured card, the branding teams got to work on making their t-shirts, helmets, baseball caps and bike frames stand out from the rest.

Once all the parts were acquired, the Teams had to assemble their bikes, at out venue near Hove Station, and prepare for the race. They were given five locations; Brighton Pier, Hove Lagoon, the Angel of Peace Statue, the HOP Offices and Hove station.  They had to ride their newly assembled bikes to the locations, take a selfie, and back, all in the shortest time, switching riders as they went.

The result? The Red team won the race, however special commendation and second place was given to the Black team for their branding.

 

We were then graciously hosted by Franco Manca for pizza, drinks, and prizes!

One of the bikes was given to a staff member in a free raffle, two will be kept at the HOP offices and the remaining two will be donated to charity.  In a particularly touching moment, the winner of the raffle donated their bike to another member of the HOP team, who had recently had their bike stolen.

It was a fantastic afternoon for the team and an excellent team building exercise with, logistics, delegation, activity, creativity – particularly for the new starters that have joined HOP in recent months.

 

A special thank you to Ralli Hall in Hove for hosting us, Franco Manca for feeding us, and the following companies for allow us to store our pedals, wheels and seats at your offices;

  • RLF
  • Crowthers Associates
  • Potter Raper
  • HNW Architects
  • MacConvilles